Pelosi, Nancy Patricia
[key], 1940–, U.S. congresswoman, Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives (2007–11, 2019–), b. Baltimore as Nancy
Patricia D'Alesandro. The daughter of Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Jr., who served
as Baltimore's mayor and a congressman, she moved to California, where she
became active in the Democratic party. In 1987 she was was first elected to
the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election. A liberal from San
Francisco, she became minority whip in 2001 and succeeded Dick Gephardt as minority leader in 2003,
becoming the first woman to hold high-ranking leadership positions in the
U.S. Congress. Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 congressional
elections led to her election as speaker; she became the first woman to hold
the post. After the Democrats lost their majority in 2010, Pelosi again was
minority leader (2011–19); she again became speaker after the 2018
and 2020 elections. Pelosi has long been a target of conservative
politicians, and she was a strong opponent of President Donald Trump, memorably tearing up the
official copy of his State of the Union speech after he gave it to Congress
in 2020. When Republicans won control of the House in the 2022 elections,
Pelosi said she would not seek a leadersip role in the new Congress.
See biographies by E. S. Povich (2008) and M. Ball (2020).
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